


jealous wavering torrent

by starghost



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Marauders' Era, Post-Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 05:49:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5856571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starghost/pseuds/starghost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fic prompt: use the words jealous, wavering, and torrent in a fic. Post-Hogwarts Marauders fic. Originally posted to LJ circa 2006.</p>
            </blockquote>





	jealous wavering torrent

The skies were dark with clouds, heavy with the weight of rain. Remus mused on the poetic ideal that the weather contained, how it mirrored what he felt. There was something forboding hanging over his head, and he didn't want to have to deal with the inevitable. He pulled his worn jacket more tightly around him. With one last accusatory glance at the gathering storm, he stepped back inside.  
  
Sirius was sitting at the table shuffling a deck of cards, a habit that showed itself when he was brooding. A pan sat angled off a burner on the stove. The remains of dinner sat hardening in it. Remus scraped at the detritus with a dirty butter knife, testing how hard it was caked on, then gave up and submerged the pan in the soapy water of the sink. After he wiped off his hands, he hung the thin towel on the handle to the stove and waited. He started picking at his nails. Sirius continued shuffling the cards rhythmically, the flipping sound of the cards the loudest noise in the room.   
  
"Why'd you do it, you bastard?" Sirius divided the deck, holding half in each hand and tapping the halves on the table.   
  
"Is there ever a reason?" Remus replied, apparently too lightly, as some of the cards sprayed from Sirius's right hand. He looked at the back of Sirius's head, wondering exactly what his expression was.  
  
"I thought -- Sod what I thought. Were you pissed?" Sirius asked. He picked up the cards slowly, placing them back in the stack, and Remus watched his hands.  
  
"Not very." Remus paused, considering. "It was a wedding. She was attractive. I was single -- "  
  
"Funny, because I wasn't." Sirius was quiet and dangerous, an attitude not foreign to Remus. He thought he could feel the invisible weighty clouds in the room contort and become something different. He put his hands deep in his pockets.  
  
"Weren't you? We never talked about it. I assumed that as you hadn't said anything, it was a fluke and wasn't going to happen again."   
  
"It was a fluke," Sirius agreed. He combined the two small stacks of cards, letting them slip together between his hands. "Should have said something," he added, in a tone that suggested he was berating himself. Remus watched as Sirius split, lined up, and blended the deck again, before sliding it back in its box. Sirius stood up and walked to the doorway. "I can never tell when to speak and when to be silent."  
  
Remus let him leave, and stared at the box of cards. He fingered a coin in his pocket, and the lights went out.  
  
"Well, bugger," he said, blinking in the near pitch dark. He fumbled for his wand, and found his pockets empty. There was a muffled noise from the other room which he ignored. Remus opened a drawer, rummaging through it to find some matches; he blindly pushed his way through each drawer and cupboard he could find. On top of the cabinets he found a dusty stub of wax and wick, which he lit after he slipped off of the countertop he had been kneeling on.   
  
The room Sirius had gone into was just as dark, only the light of the candle bringing out wavering shadows. Sirius was laying on his back staring at the ceiling, and Remus stood over him, holding the candle to one side.  
  
"Why do we have matches?" he asked, and a drop of wax fell to the carpet.  
  
"Maybe they came with the house. Where's your wand?" Remus sat next to Sirius's shoulders, his legs crossed.  
  
"Probably by my book. Yours?"   
  
"I think it fell on the other side of the table," Sirius said, gesturing off to one side. Remus peered under the table.  
  
"I think I see it. Why are you on the ground?" Remus asked.  
  
"I fell," he replied. There was a moment of silence where Remus looked at Sirius almost disapprovingly. Sirius added, "When the lights went out. I think I broke something and I dropped my wand." Remus crawled over him and reached under the table, coming back with his wand in hand.   
  
"May I?" he asked, and Sirius didn't move. Remus set the candle on the table, where the wax melted into the grain of the wood. The flame cast enough light to see by. He moved down and prodded Sirius's thigh. "What's broken, then?"  
  
"Left ankle. Foot. General region below the knee." Sirius propped himself up on his elbows to watch Remus press the wand gently to his shin, moving it slowly along his leg to his toes.   
  
"It's not broken," he said, and summoned a roll of bandages from another room. Remus pushed the leg of his trousers up to his knee.   
  
"I may have exaggerrated." Sirius winced as Remus lifted his foot. Remus held the end of the bandage to Sirius's ankle with his palm and began to wrap it slowly. With the exception of Sirius cursing under his breath throughout, Remus worked in silence. He set Sirius's foot down gently when he finished.  
  
"It's going to hurt when you stand up," Remus warned, tucking the end of the excess bandage away.  
  
"I'm not standing up," Sirius retorted.   
  
"You are, but not just yet. Sit up." Sirius straightened and looked at Remus expectantly. Remus handed Sirius his wand and let a beat go by, hoping to feel a change in the air. "If you had said something before, what would you have said?" Sirius cast a bleary, sour look at Remus and lay on his back again, staring at the ceiling.  
  
"What should I have said?" He sounded defeated in a way that made Remus feel more than guilty. "That it was what I had been unconsciously looking for? That you were? I wasn't after more than friendship from you, but when I kissed -- You kissed -- Who kissed who that night?"  
  
"It seems like it ended up being equal," Remus replied. "Though I think I started it."  
  
"But when you kissed me, and I touched you, and we -- God, how strange to say -- and we fucked, made love, had sex, whatever classification you want to give it, something shifted. I hated you for it the moment I saw you with some cousin or friend of Lily's because I had never been jealous like that before. It almost burned, but I couldn't show anything because I was dancing with Lily and we were laughing over something until we waltzed by that corner." Sirius paused.   
  
Sirius was slipping his thumb against his fingers, curled on his stomach. Remus guessed it was an empty imitation of shuffling cards, a simple nervous gesture   
taken from the act. He considered saying something, but before he could come up with a response, Sirius spoke again.  
  
"I don't know what I would have said. Wouldn't have made it up on the spot like I'm doing now. Maybe I would have said something half-coherent about how that night had changed something between us, because how could it not? and then added something about love and friendship and your eyes and then run off to hide in my room."  
  
"My eyes?" Remus asked after a moment. Sirius propped himself up to glare lightly at Remus.  
  
"I've said all that and you pick up on the fact I mentioned your eyes?" Sirius asked. Remus shrugged, looking down. If he were to continue his metaphor for the night, he'd add something about feeling the first raindrops, but he blinked and met Sirius's eyes again instead.  
  
"It's just that my eyes are plain and it was a nice compliment."   
  
"Your eyes are plain to people that don't know you, maybe. To me they're like looking at everything that's you, only so intense that I can't bear it sometimes. What if I had said your hands, or your smile, or the way you curl up in your jacket, or how you look when you're exhausted and asleep?" Sirius said. The candle flickered one last time and sputtered out, leaving a black mark on the table amidst a puddle of wax. Remus blinked when Sirius cast a bright Lumos.   
  
"You would say that?" Remus asked.  
  
"You're ignoring the point." Sirius laid on his back again, swirling his wand through the air and changing the shadows in the room.  
  
"I know I am," Remus said, and shifted, crawling up to lay on his belly next to Sirius. He stared at the wall in front of him.  
  
"What would you have said in response? What do you say?" Sirius asked, very quietly. The shadows around the room stilled as Sirius brought his wand to a stop.  
  
"Yes," Remus replied, his voice barely louder. "It did change something. You didn't say anything and I thought you regretted it. I got over it and enjoyed the wedding. How could you expect me to think any different when you didn't say anything and didn't act any differently around me? I had no reason to believe you wanted it to happen again. Also, I'd say 'had sex.' 'Made love' implies an established relationship and 'fucked' just sounds off."  
  
"Now I'm saying something. I'm saying I don't want to have sex with you again." Remus made a surprised noise and turned his head toward Sirius, whose eyes were closed. "I'm a desperate fool and I want to make love with you. To you. What's the correct preposition?"  
  
"With," Remus choked out. He swallowed. "Either, really. And if this ruins our friendship?"  
  
"Then I pack, and I leave, and I don't let myself regret saying it," Sirius answered. Remus pushed himself up to kneel next to Sirius. He grabbed Sirius's arm and pulled him up.  
  
"You should get on the couch and put your foot up," Remus said. He stood, and pulled Sirius awkwardly to his feet; Sirius let out a torrent of curses and put all his weight on his left foot. They ambled to the couch, where Sirius dropped and Remus piled cushions under his foot. Sirius looked warily at Remus.  
  
"So I'll just find my luggage tomorrow morning, then," Sirius said dejectedly. Remus perched on the edge of the table, looking straight ahead rather than at Sirius.  
  
"No," he said. He noticed the air felt lighter. When Remus stood up, Sirius looked at him as if he was going to continue by offering to pack his things for him tonight. Instead, Remus leaned down and pressed a brief kiss to his forehead then looked down at him, his hands pulling at the cuffs of his jacket. "I'll just -- Would you like some tea?"  
  
"All we have are stale bags of Earl Grey. Cocoa?" Sirius asked, and Remus shook his head. He sat down again, still pulling at his cuffs and making the jacket slide in small amounts off his shoulders.  
  
"I'm sorry. Not for the tea or cocoa. I -- I rather like the way you close your eyes when you're being truthful. And your hair." Remus stopped, then smiled to himself in memory. "And the way you growled when I ran my fingers down your back." Sirius half-closed his eyes.  
  
"Oh. That," he said in a low voice. "What are you trying to say?"  
  
"You're staying. We'll see what happens as our friendship isn't ruined." Sirius smiled tiredly in relief, and his eyes fell the rest of the way shut. "But now you sleep," he added quietly, brushing his hand over Sirius's forehead. As he settled into the chair by the window, he glanced out. The storm that quietly shut off the power to their flat had already begun to lighten and disappate, and he felt content as he drifted gradually into sleep.


End file.
